There's much that's really interesting in the book, but one of the things that particularly fascinated me was his exploration of the relationship between scientists and the BBC in the 1950s.
The movie version of Mamma Mia! opens wide next week, with one or two cinemas already offering special previews. Go see it.
The film, just like the theatre show, is irresistible: a joyful, delightful and occasionally poignant confection with reflections on age and youth, dreams and realities that remain just the right side of trite. Phyllida Lloyd directs brilliantly, drawing out a marvellous comic performance from Meryl Streep and finding a screen language that's direct but inventive, and that bounces satisfyingly between reality (well, sort of) and all-out fantasy.
I was particularly interested to see it because, just about a decade ago, Illuminations was working with Phyllida on the television film of Benjamin Britten's Gloriana.
I just saw Madeleine (1949) at BFI South Bank, showing as part of the David Lean season. It was a newly restored, glowing print and, although it's not a lost masterpiece, it's an interesting studio film with some strong sequences, exceptional monochrome camerawork (Guy Green) and, a true surprise, a completely open ending.
What engaged me most was, first, a sense that (because the film was entirely new to me) I didn't know how the plot turned out: was Madeleine, a character from history in mid-19th century Scotland, guilty or not guilty of poisoning her lover? And the film keeps you guessing throughout, offering hints and tips and suggestions but never revealing its hand.
I'm right at the beginning of another journey through the world of John Ford. Thanks to a season of films at , I think, 10pm on Sunday nights on BBC2 back in the early 1970s, Ford was probably the first director who I understood as in some (entirely untheorised) way as an author. Around the same time, or a little later, I saw a clutch of Godard films together, in screenings at the University of Kent at Canterbury, and ever since both directors have defined something fundamental for me.
Since then I've seen Ford films at the NFT and I've recorded them on VHS from the television. But now of course DVD offers an unparalleled way to watch and study the movies. Especially since the release at the end of last year of the monumental Ford at Fox collection.
In this picture everything, ancient or modern, “real” or “unreal,” has
its own stunned dignity, and the movie wants us to see it all as
beautiful — as its people, tragically, cannot... “Contempt” is about men and women rendered graceless by
their times, but the movie, substituting rigorous aesthetics for the
novel’s psychology, shows us where they (and we) went wrong and
achieves an extraordinary grace.
Philip French once again demonstrates his mastery, reviewing Vantage Point, which I saw last night. He picks up references I'd noticed (The Conversation, Dealey Plaza) but adds much that I didn't know (Robert Browning, editor Stuart Baird's connection with Ken Russell). Watching the movie (which isn't as good as it ought to be), I was also struck by how the explicit manipulation of time is an increasingly important factor in American thrillers; think of Michael Clayton and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.
The Guardian today gives away a DVD of Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. In its way, I find this extraordinary, but I'm happy to live in a media world where it can happen.
I believe that nature, circumstances, the setting at the moment of shooting, and the filmed material itself at the moment of montage, can sometimes be wiser than the author and director... No scene of shooting on the Odessa steps appeared in any of the preliminary versions or in any of the montage lists that were prepared. It was born in the instant of immediate contact.
Sergei Eisenstein Eisenstein: Potemkin (Moscow, 1926)
